102-year-old Worcester resident gives up driving

Monday

Feb 11, 2013 at 7:04 PM

By Ellie Oleson CORRESPONDENT

Rose Ella Barry gave up her driver’s license and sold her car on Jan. 1. She said she was perfectly fit to drive, but doubted that the Department of Motor Vehicles would renew the license of a 102-year-old.

“I knew damn well they wouldn’t give me a license when it ran out in February,” she said.

Mrs. Barry, a resident of Stratton Hill Park apartments in Worcester, celebrated her 102nd birthday a day early on Feb. 1 at the Lorraine Gleick Nordgren Senior Center in Auburn with about 30 of her friends.

“She’s a great gal. People love her,” said Patty R. Hubbard, nutrition site director in Auburn.

Mrs. Barry is sharp and smart, with a quirky sense of humor and a remarkable memory. Her complexion is smooth, so she looks like a woman a half-century younger than she is.

She said her secrets for aging gracefully are exercising every day, eating right, “going with the flow,” and using only Dove soap and Pond’s Cold Cream on her face. Her only makeup is lipstick.

“I’m a happy-go-lucky person,” she said.

She said this was not her first encounter with the Telegram & Gazette.

“I won an art prize from the Telegram when I was 9. Old lady Higgins ran that contest, and I won. I got a tour of the newspaper on Franklin Street. It was great,” she said.

She has a photograph of herself wearing a midi blouse and bloomers for her tour of the T&G in 1920.

Mrs. Barry was the third of nine children of Cyril and Florence Gauthier. The family lived for a time on Nixon Avenue in Webster Square. Mrs. Barry, her sister Doris Clark, 95, and brother, Henry Gauthier, 85, all of Worcester, remain.

“I had six sisters and two brothers. We were a very close family. When we lived on Nixon Avenue, we used to go to Worcester Airport when Gordon’s was flying planes. That was something!” she said.

During World War I, Wyman-Gordon Co. supplied parts for Curtis Jenny biplanes, which were tested from Worcester airport.

During that “war to end all wars,” Mr. Gauthier worked at Fort Devens building homes for troops, and supplemented the family income by selling apples from his wagon, pulled by his horse team.

The family moved to College Hill in the city when Mr. Gauthier built the family a new home on Epworth and Electric streets.

Rose was 17 years old when her father died.

“He was working on the Old South Church on Main Street and Piedmont Street when he fell 40 feet off the roof, leaving my mother with nine children. The youngest was 2,” Mrs. Barry said.

“My mother had pulled me out of school when I was 14 so I could work. I’ve worked all my life.”

While working at a fashion shop on King Street, Rose attended Worcester Vocational School and graduated at 16 with a diploma in clothing.

She said she mainly worked in garment shops, but also became one of a small army of women selling Larkin Co. products door-to-door. That formerly successful company folded during the Great Depression.

“I bought a camera while I was selling Larkin’s. That’s why I’m not in most of my pictures. I was taking them.”

Her family was extremely religious, which she remains. She belongs to St. Christopher’s Roman Catholic Church and watches Mass every day on television and receives Communion at least once a month in her apartment.

“I pray for everybody every day. I once wanted to be a nun like my aunt in Canada, but she said to take my time and make sure,” Mrs. Barry said.

Instead, she married Rene Lagace, a World War I veteran and a meat broker 15 years her senior. The couple had one daughter, Jeanne R. Servin, who became a vice president of Commerce Bank before her retirement, and two grandsons, Richard and Brian Servin. Mrs. Servin works with her son Brian, who owns and operates Best Business Systems computer and printer service at 380 Burncoat St. in the city.

Mrs. Barry was widowed at age 38 when a chicken bone Mr. Lagace had accidentally swallowed pierced his intestine. “My daughter was 11 when he died. He was a good father.”

Widowed young, Mrs. Barry married again, but that did not work out. She continued to work to support her daughter and sewed most of their clothes, including her daughter’s prom gowns.

“I sewed so much, I hate it now,” she said, pointing to her sewing machine, which she uses as a table.

She also is a talented artist. A painting of blue delphiniums and red poppies in her living room, once hung in a hospital in Indianapolis when she lived there. She also made ceramics and other artworks.

“I love all sorts of crafts,” she said.

She is a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion Auxiliary, and is a past president of the Morrisette American Legion Post in Quincy.

In her younger days, she traveled extensively, including trips to Jamaica, Hawaii, the Coral Islands and the Virgin Islands, though she never learned to swim. She enjoyed several trips to Las Vegas, where she played poker and slots. She said she never had any interest in traveling to Europe.

“I loved dancing. I can’t dance now, but I exercise every day,” she said.

She was living on Greenwood Street in Worcester 30 years ago, when she began driving to Auburn to bowl at the AMF Auburn Lanes and enjoy lunch and card games at the senior center.

She stopped bowling when she was nearly 100, but kept driving herself to Auburn to enjoy lunch and socialize four days a week until giving up her license last month.

“I still want to come to Auburn, but now I need a ride. It’s very difficult,” she said. She is hoping the Worcester Regional Transit Authority will work with her to get her to Auburn regularly.

“That senior center is a great place with good people,” she said.

Her attitude toward life can be summed up by her response to a nurse who asked Mrs. Barry if she wanted extraordinary measures taken to keep her alive should she fall ill.

She said, “Of course! I love life. I want to live as long as God wants me to.’ ”